Our Environment, Connectedness, and Health Online Offline – otherwise know as ECHO-O Lab ran a series of online workshops during the ESRC’s Festival of Social Science finishing off with an in-person networking event in November entitled “Smart Socials and the Digital Youth” focusing on the risks, benefits and opportunities of children’s and adolescents’ social media use.

Led by Dr Beatrice Hayes and Professor Dawn Watling, this series of events were funded by the ESRC SSIA (The Social Science Impact Accelerator programme) and were conducted in partnership with charity collaborators: Surrey Youth Focus, Eikon and Mindworks. 

A total of 86 educational practitioners attended the online workshops, covering topical themes linked with understanding behaviours connected to social media and the digital world. They were led by Professor Dawn Watling (“Living in the Online World”), Gemma Rides and Zain Khan (“Connecting the Dots: Looking Beyond Time Spent Online”), Dr Beatrice Hayes (“Breaking Down Social Media: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly”), and Dr Yvonne Skipper from the University of Glasgow (“Co-creating Social Media Literacy”). 

The final event, was held in-person at Royal Holloway, and comprised a networking opportunity for educational practitioners across Surrey and London. Beatrice Hayes and Dawn Watling gave an overview of the ECHO-O Lab’s findings regarding children’s and adolescents’ social media use, followed by guest speakers Chris Hickford (Eikon) and Dr. Dave Damon (Mindworks).

The events were a great success and provided an opportunity to connect research with practitioners on how to best navigate children’s and adolescents’ social media use.

The ECHO-O Lab at Royal Holloway’s Psychology Department seeks to understand how experiences and connections we form, online and offline, may impact mental health and wellbeing. Talks from the event series were recorded and can be found on the ECHO-O Lab website here

With thanks to Nifty Fox for this fabulous infographic capturing the discussions of the day!